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Grading writing: The art and science — and why computers can’t do it

Tech companies and university administrators get excited from time to time about the value of software that purports to evaluate student writing. This article does a great job explaining exactly what it is that writing teachers do when they respond to student writing. (We’re doing a lot more than looking for misplaced commas.)

But what goes into professional writing teachers’ responses to student writing? Notice that I’ve chosen the term “respond,” which certainly includes grading: how good is this text on some scale of measure? “Respond” is a bigger term, though: what ideas and reactions does this writing create? How might its author improve similar writing in the future? It’s one thing to say whether your writing is any good; it’s quite another to explain to you helpfully why.

Any piece of writing is good or bad within at least five dimensions:

how well it fits a given readership or audience;

how well it achieves a given purpose;

how much ambition it displays;

how well it conforms to matters of fact and reasoning; and

how well it matches formal conventions expected by its audience.

These dimensions intersect, and teachers have to solve a cat’s cradle of their interactions to discern quality. — Washington Post